charcoal on archival paper

21.75"x 27.5"x2"

I was in Houston, Texas, for an exhibition in September of 2017, three weeks after Hurricane Harvey devastated the city. I contacted a friend and he took me on a tour of the destruction. The city had already done a massive cleanup. But block after block of houses that on the outside seemed virtually unscathed showed their interior devastation by the huge piles of detritus that they had disgorged, waiting to be picked up by the city’s trucks. The astonishing mountains of debris, piles of everything from household products to structural components – dishes, appliances, doors, windows, furniture, books, musical instruments, mattresses, clothing–configured into a quasi cubist esthetic of destruction. I recorded the horror in photographs and videos.

Naomie Kremer is a painter, video artist, and stage designer, with work in collections including the Whitney Museum; Berkeley Art Museum; The Fine Arts Museums of SF; US Embassy, Beijing. Her video sets include: Tristan and Isolde by Wagner; Alcina, by Handel; The Secret Garden commissioned by SF Opera and Cal performances; Light Moves, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. She Art Directed a short: Chagall: My Life, with Shadowlight Productions. Represented by Modernism Gallery, SF.